Bloomsday

2015 release. Esbe, is an multi-genre music producer from Los Angeles, California. He is known for his atmospheric instrumental production which incorporates sound elements from extensive use of jazz and soul samples. Bloomsday is a collection of 19 essential instrumentals. If you were to grab tracks at random from Bloomsday, you might not have guessed that those songs came from the same album. However, when you listen to the album in the way that it was arranged, it will all start to make sense, and you can start to hear how Esbe connects the dots from one song to the next. Esbe draws from a lot of different styles and influences, whether it be soul, hard bop, cool jazz, bossa nova, boom bap, down tempo, jungle, house, or drum and bass, just to name a few. This might sound like he's unfocused or trying to do too much with his music, but Esbe has a good sense for not overcrowding his individual tracks. Each song might bring in a couple of different elements, but he keeps his arrangements clean, with just the right amount of interesting samples to build from, and the patience to let them unfold at a steady pace, without forcing anything. There are plenty of obscure samples that you won't place, but he also manages to pick a few key spots to drop some well-known samples, but then re-purposes them in interesting ways in which to give them new life. Bloomsday will take more than one listen to really sink in, but it will eventually sneak up on you and reveal its cleverness in really subtle and interesting ways. Esbe has a large musical vocabulary, but he also knows when to pick his spots, piling it on thick at key moments, and backing away at others, giving the listener space to breath and soak in all the different musical ideas floating around here.